Based on their official website memcached is defined as:

Free & open source, high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load.

Memcached is an in-memory key-value store for small chunks of arbitrary data (strings, objects) from results of database calls, API calls, or page rendering.

Memcached is simple yet powerful. Its simple design promotes quick deployment, ease of development, and solves many problems facing large data caches. Its API is available for most popular languages.

— memcached.org

MemCached Server

This is how I installed(a simple installation) my memcached server that can be accessed by a webserver on our local area network. The server is running Ubuntu as its operating system. Caution: The version on ubuntu’s repository could not be the latest version. Refer to memcached’s website for the latest version. If you want to install the latest version from the source you can refer to memcached’s wiki page

Open synaptic package manager and install memcached and php5-memcached. After the installation restart the webserver using the command:

Start memcached by using the command:

By default memcached is running on port 11211 and is accessible by the machine with IP 127.0.0.1 which is the machine’s local IP address with 64MB memory allocation

To try if memcached is working use this simple PHP code

< ?php
$m = new Memcached();
$m->addServer('localhost', 11211);

$m->set('int', 99);
$m->set('string', 'a simple string');
$m->set('array', array(11, 12));
$m->set('object', new stdclass, time() + 300);

var_dump($m->get('int'));
var_dump($m->get('string'));
var_dump($m->get('array'));
var_dump($m->get('object'));
?>

Open the script on the browser. Try opening the cli and telnet to memcached using the command:

The image below shows how the cli would look like after the command

Check memcached’s status by using the command

We can get a cached value using the command:

It should return “a simple string” as assigned on the script.

To explore more, commands can be seen on this page http://lzone.de/articles/memcached.htm

To allow another machine (local web server) to store data on the memcached server we need to edit the configuration file using the command:

In my case I changed the allotted memory to 256MB and allowed IP of 191.168.1.254 which is our windows webserver as seen on the image below:

After the configuration I restarted memcached using the command:

The Webserver (XAMPP)

To quickly test the memcached server I used xampp portable version which can be downloaded on their official website www.apachefriends.org.

As stated earlier the webserver is already allowed to use the memcached server. As an information memcached is a daemon which runs like the mysql server, so we need PHP to connect to the memcached server.

1. To start, download memcached on code.jellycan.com/memcached which is win32 binary.
2. After downloading extract the file (recommended: C:\memcached). You should have the file memcached.exe
3. We can install memcached as a service on the command line using the command:
   C:\memcached\memcached.exe -d install
4. Start memcached using the command:
   C:\memcached\memcached.exe -d start
5. After running memcached we need to tie it with PHP using the php_memcached.dll. You should have this file on your PHP’s ext folder, if not download the file at these links http://downloads.php.net/pierre/, http://www.pureformsolutions.com/pureform.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/php_memcache.dll or on our server: php_memcached.dll.rar
6. enable the use of php_memcached.dll by editing your php.ini and uncomment the line extension=php_memcache.dll if it does not exist add this line. After editing the file restart the webserver.

You can access the data on the memcached server by using the code below:

< ?php
        $memcache = new Memcache();
        if(!$memcache->connect('191.168.1.7', 11211))
                die("Couldn't connect to memcached!");

        $key="string";

        $result = $memcache->get($key);

        if($result)
        {
                echo "$key is $result";
        }
        else
        {
            echo 'There is no data saved named '. $key;
        }
?>

You should have an output of “a simple string”. I hope this helped you set up the server. Happy coding!

Sources:

http://pureform.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/installing-memcache-on-windows-for-php/

http://memcached.org

http://blogs.oracle.com/oswald/entry/cache_cache_cache_part_1

One of the server I am using is running ubuntu. I am installing memcached on the server and every time I restart the web server I always have the error “Could not reliably determine the server’s fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName”. If you are having the same error then this post is for you. To solve the problem this is how I solved the problem.

Open the cli and use the command to edit apache’s config file:

The file is empty by default. Add the line:

Save the changes and restart the server:

I hope this solved the problem… Happy coding!

One trick to save more time in opening your mostly visited folder is to add it on Nautilus file manager/browser. As shown in the image, I added my www folder to nautilus which is my mostly opened folder. To do this simple trick just follow the steps bellow:

1. Open the folder you want to add to nautilus
2. Press ctrl + D

That is it! Hope it helps.

I switched my ubuntu Oneiric to bactrack 5 Gnome and try out the new tools I wanted to use. Lately I thought everything will be fine out of the box but noticed that some of the tools I use and explored are not working well. I am using Aspire 4736 and installed backtrack 5 Gnome 64bit. After the installation I had a lot of things to fix and would want to fix them one by one. The first thing I encountered was after installing I just see a black screen and nothing displays or even sometimes this happens after seeing the grub menu. Its a good thing that the grub menu is still there. When you are on the grub menu press e and replace nomodeset to;

After that you should now be able to login and use startx. After that we need to update grub so that we will not keep on typing the line every time we turn on the machine. To make the changes open the grub file found at /usr/share/grub/default/grub using your favorite editor.

Here is the lines found on my grub file;

As seen on the highlighted line I added i915.nomodeset=0 to the line to fix the black screen. You should now update grub using the command below;

Below are some of the errors you can do to fix your problems;

Ettercap

Fast-Track Update

This tool is one of my favorite. There are some changes needed to be done on the scripts.

Open /pentest/exploits/fasttrack/bin/menu/updatemenu.py and make the changes on line 62;

and line 67;

Open the file /pentest/exploits/fasttrack/config/fasttrack_config and on line 9 add;

You can start update fast-track; -> http://www.backtrack-linux.org/forums/showthread.php?t=44086

WICD Network Manager

After setting up a wireless AP, the annoying error of WICD always pops out. To fix this problem we can solve the problem on BT’s wiki -> http://www.backtrack-linux.org/wiki/index.php/Basic_Usage#WICD_Network_Manager

The fixes above are just few of the bugs. I will be updating this post once in a while after testing every fix I see on the forum

One of the things I find hard in developing a web application is using a library for sending email such as PHPMailer. I find it hard when used to send emails. Another thing I find hard is when sending emails in a localhost webserver. It would also cost me more and would take much time in setting up my own mail server. PHP’s mail function is also very useless in such testing ground.

If you are using a gmail account and want to use PHP’s mail function in your local webserver, here is a better way to relay an email to gmail. I am using backtrack 5 Gnome and the steps will also work for debian based distros. Follow the steps below,

Install ssmtp,

After installing ssmtp, open the configuration file.

Append the configuration at the bottom

After the changes, you can now use PHP’s mail function

< ?php
$message = "This is a test";
$message = wordwrap($message, 70);
mail('icpep.org@gmail.com', 'My Subject', $message);
?>

Gpick is an advanced color picker written in C++ using GTK+ toolkit. This application is an alternative for window’s colorpic. One feature I like about this application is the same feature I found on window’s colorpic which shows a magnifier of the area where you want to capture the color.

These are some of the tools and commands I use to clean up my ubuntu powered laptop.

Cleaning Downloaded and Uninstalled Packages and Dependencies

As what I have observed in using ubuntu, most packages are not ready after installation though most of the applications can be downloaded freely from the internet. Just like windows os we need to download packages from trusted sources, and for ubuntu we have the synaptic package manager which helps us which applications are available for our use.

debfoster. After installing a lot of packages it would be difficult for us to track which packages we installed. This application will help us track on the applications we installed on our machine. Before installing any applications you need to install this application first. debfoster can be downloaded on the synaptic package manager for free or we can use the following commands to install it via cli:

debfoster

After the installation, we need to create the initial keeper file:

After creating the keeper file we need to force the system to conform to the keeper file

After that debfoster will keep track of your installed applications. If you want an application to be not included on any uninstallation you can edit the keeper file:

If you needed to check which packages and dependencies that needs to be removed you can use:

gtkorphan. This application is used to remove orphaned packages. Orphan packages are packages that is no longer being maintained by a developer. Keeping orphaned packages can be a pain in the head especially when there are less support. To remove the packages we can install this application using:

The application is very easy to use because it has a GUI as seen on the image below:

After installing you can navigate to System-> Administration-> Removed Orphaned package. It will show you the orphaned packages, you can check the box for the packages you want to remove.

After installing and uninstalling packages there could be a lot of dependencies and packages that is no longer in use. You can use the following commands to remove unused files.

To remove any partial packages use the command:

To clean apt cache use the command:

To remove unused dependencies:

If you are not using the application, it’s better to uninstall it. To uninstall you can always use the synaptic package manager to completely remove unwanted packages. If not you can use the following commands:

where application-name is the application you want to remove. If not you can use this command:

but it is not always recommended to use this command in uninstalling any packages.

One of the tools I like to use to test servers is bruteforceSSH.  Though most systems today can already detect bruteforce attacks some lazy system administrators and outdated networks can be penetrated. If you have no password list you can use the darcode password list that goes with backtrack 5.  This is no longer used in the latest version of backtrack because there is already a much powerful tool that supports different protocol password attacks which is xHydra.  This tool comes with a GUI, you can also use the console mode in pentesting a system.  I’m using bruteforce for fun, I haven’t tried it in the previous versions of backtrack because I’ve just been with the “infoSec”  for months.

I dual booted both Windows 7 and Backtrack 5 on my Laptop and a problem starts when I used thunderbird on Backtrack Linux because all my mails are on my windows OS. Based on what I know, Thunderbird creates a profile during my first run of thunderbird on windows. Everything is stored in that folder (accounts, mails, extensions, etc.). In linux, I know that thunderbird does the same thing. What I wanted to do was to use only one profile for both OS so that I won’t consume more disk space just by copying all mails on windows to linux.

If you are caught in the same situation, here is what I did to solve the problem.

1. After installing thunderbird on Backtrack open it but don’t add your email accounts, this is done to create the needed files and folders where thunderbird store the data. Close thunderbird after opening it.
2. Locate your thunderbird profile folder on windows( /media/disk/Documents and Settings/icpep/Application Data/Thunderbird/Profiles/1yfn577a.default ).
3. Locate your profile folder on linux ( /root/.mozilla-thunderbird/ )
4. Create a symbolic link of your windows profile page to your linux profile page, the command is:
   ln -s “/media/disk/Documents and Settings/icpep/Application Data/Thunderbird/Profiles/1yfn577a.default”   ”/root/.mozilla-thunderbird/”

   Do not forget the double quotes

5. After creating the symbolic link, open the   profiles.ini  file
   and edit the line path to the created symbolic link.

Example of the line is shown below:

Path=1yfn577a.default

After changing the path you can now open thunderbird and should see everything like that of windows thunderbird.